Windy Tops

Tag: accident

  • A sad Tararua tale of the usual sorts of reasons

    I’ve held off writing much about the November 2016 accident in the Tararua, near Alpha Hut, where two people died. There hasn’t seemed to have been much new to write about which I haven’t already covered previously in this forum.

    Last week I received a copy of the final Coroner’s report, which has now been released. Flick me an email if you’d like a copy.

    Background

    There’s not much new in the coroner’s findings that has not already been reported. It makes for some depressing reading. The findings describe that both men were fit, and that one had “significant tramping experience in New Zealand”. Neither had ever visited the Tararua, however, and “experience” is often a subjective metric. It’s not a word that always correlates with ability in all circumstances.

    The two men appear to have made plans to attempt what’s commonly known as the Neill-Winchcombe circuit after a work conference in Wellington. The trip was a last minute decision. Clear intentions had seemingly not been left with anyone, except that they intended to stay at a hut, probably Alpha Hut.

    There’s a relatively direct route to Alpha Hut from their starting point, but they instead opted to follow a much longer, circular route. Maybe this decision was made if they thought the direct route appeared to short and boring, but exactly why this decision was made is unknown.

    Without clear intentions being available, the main sequence of events has been reconstructed from other evidence.

    Here’s a map of the area.

    The pair left the Waiohine Gorge carpark, inland from Greytown, in the early morning of Saturday 19th November. From there they tramped west to Cone Saddle, climbed to Cone, then north-west to Neill Saddle and around to Winchcombe. After Winchcombe, the route crosses to the west and eventually meets the more popular Southern Crossing track at the peak of Mt Hector. Hector is a relatively short distance south of Kime Hut, but they instead walked south-west, around the Dress Circle and eventually towards Alpha Hut where they most likely meant to stay the night.

    They never reached Alpha Hut.
    (more…)

  • Another two too many in the Tararua Range

    Two deaths occurred near Alpha Hut in the Tararua, in late 2016. I didn’t write about them at the time, but today Stuff published an article regarding the Coroner’s investigation.

    The men were attempting to walk the standard Neill-Winchcombe circuit. It starts at Waiohine Gorge, into Cone Saddle and up to Cone (.1080). Then there’s a steep dip into Neill Saddle before climbing up to Neill (.1158), across the ridge to Winchcombe Peak (.1261), then to the junction of Mt Hector (.1529) before continuing along the main Southern Crossing route back to Alpha Hut. From there, there’s a route via Bull Mound and Cone Hut back to the starting point. Here’s a topo map of the region.

    The route is a good fit trip, but it’s also very exposed to the worst sorts of conditions which the Tararua Range is capable of throwing at people. The route is notorious because there are very few good places to bail out if something goes wrong. For much of the route along the tops, the only practical directions to take are either forwards or backwards.

    The two men were found about 900 metres short of Alpha Hut, sparking confusion about how they managed to get so close without reaching comparative safety.

    I’ve read this article a few times, and each time I’m finding it more and more incredible about what these people were trying to do compared with how badly they seem to have been prepared. On one hand, I’m sure people have gotten away with worse than this and, hopefully, learned something. But still…..

    These distances could be misleading, because the exposed ridges could be demanding and difficult, Rix said. In his opinion, the two men were not wearing adequate protection from the weather, which they may have struggled through for a while.

    Neither had a maps, compass, GPS or light source.

    The idea of this seems almost unfathomable to me, considering what they were attempting. Maybe they’d planned to do all their navigation with a smartphone? Maybe they’d committed the route, and everything around it, to memory?
    (more…)

  • Thoughts on another Tararua rescue

    The Southern Crossing of the Tararuas has been in the news a few times lately. Shaun Barnett wrote this nifty description of the Southern Crossing for the April 2018 edition of Wilderness Magazine, although a feature on the Tararua Range in NZ Geographic from around mid 2016, by the same author, is much more comprehensive.

    Meanwhile the RCCNZ stated that last Sunday night, 25th March, and leading into Monday morning, a man’s life was undoubtedly saved by a group he met at Kime Hut after he arrived in a hypothermic state. A Stuff report provides further information, adding that he’d been with a companion.

    A PLB was triggered, and a LandSAR team walked up to Kime overnight. Low cloud meant a helicopter couldn’t safely reach Kime at the time. He was eventually assisted to Field Hut, at a lower elevation, and air-lifted out. His condition meant he stayed overnight at hospital. It’s good news in the sense that things could have been much worse, but weren’t.

    This case is interesting because the Stuff report suggests that the man mightn’t have been well equipped for the conditions in which he found himself. It reports that he’d previously competed in the Tararua Mountain Race, and it reads as if some of the gear he carried might have been more consistent with that sort of event.
    (more…)

  • A fuller narrative of the Taranaki alpine tragedy

    In 2013 I wrote briefly about the (then) recent alpine tragedy on Taranaki.

    A very detailed, and interactive, report about that event has now been published by Stuff.

    The article is sourced from multiple in-depth interviews with people directly involved. It covers both the accident and the rescue operation, and its narrative flows from the beginnings of decisions which combined to cause things to unravel into a disastrous situation, through the attempts to plan and deploy rescuers, and eventually to the eventual musings and hindsight of what people wished had happened differently.
    (more…)

  • Media fanning the flames of regulation

    Details are still thin, but it’s sad to learn of another death on Mt Taranaki. Not much detail has yet been released, except that an accident appears to have occurred somewhere in the vicinity of Ambury Bluff and Humphries Castle on the north-eastern side of the mountain [approximate map]. The conditions were winter conditions, but until more official details emerge I don’t think it’s fair to speculate too much.

    The article, from the Taranaki Daily News, is interesting for other reasons, though. It appears to be planting an idea for some kind of regulation, even though there’s no evidence presented that anyone’s actually asked for it.
    (more…)

  • Comparing accounts of accidents

    I’ve only been reluctantly following the recent winter incident on the Routeburn track, where a man slipped and fell, eventually dying. His partner stayed with him in freezing temperatures for several days as he died, then made her way slowly through deep snow to the isolated Lake Mackenzie Hut. She eventually broke into the nearby warden’s hut where she waited for a further 24 days before concerned friends on Facebook triggered a search with the help of local consular staff to liaise with New Zealand Police. Wilderness Magazine summarises the accident well.

    routeburn-stuff

    I’m not reluctantly following because I don’t care about the accident. It’s more that I’m reluctant to follow the coverage because so much of it is awful. At times it’s seemed more fascinated with the light-hearted “survivor” trivia of a person lasting alone for a month than of recognising and respecting that one person died, and another suffered a serious traumatic event. She then had to cope with it for a month before receiving any help, and having finally been rescued was very quickly subjected to a press conference that several media outlets advertised and live-streamed, in a language she doesn’t understand, and which she really didn’t need to be at.

    Stuff’s video example (see screenshot) is the one I’ve so far found most troubling to watch. I won’t bother embedding the video here, but I just hope it’s enough to note that the title image is symptomatic of the presentation that follows. To me it simply seems that the video’s makers and publishers have taken a terrible tragedy for multiple people, and dressed it up as if it’s simply a cheap reality TV entertainment show.
    (more…)

  • A Fortunate Outcome at Kapakapanui

    10565243633_321de4dd64_n-8070105
    Looking towards the inner Tararuas
    from near Kapakapanui Peak.

    Late last month, two women had a very fortunate outcome in the vicinity of Kapakapanui.

    In the past, I’ve written multiple trip reports describing the very accessible loop walk which the women were attempting. Here is the region on a map.

    The pair, an international student from the USA and her visiting mother, set out on Tuesday 26th April, intending to complete the commonly walked loop route which, under normal circumstances, is very accessible to anyone reasonable fit. They never checked out of their motel on Wednesday 27th April, but it wasn’t until they failed to return their rental car by 11am on Friday 29th April that Police were called.

    Police quickly located the car at the base of the Kapakapanui Track entrance to Tararua Forest Park, at the end of Ngatiawa Road east of Waikanae. By now, statistics were already not in their favour, but exactly how long they’d been missing was unclear and weather had been unmemorable during recent days.

    A Search and Rescue operation was initiated immediately. Several other trampers were located who’d seen the pair on the track on Tuesday, providing a time-frame for how long they’d been missing, but exact intentions remained unknown. Early on Saturday 30th April, four LandSAR teams entered the area. At roughly 1pm that day, the two women were spotted by a helicopter. They’d spent 4 nights outdoors, with the daughter in particular by now being extremely dehydrated, starving, and possibly within a few hours of death.
    (more…)

  • More on the Collapsing Hopuruahine Bridge

    Today this video became very noticed in New Zealand media. It shows the moment in early September 2015 when the Hopuruahine Bridge collapsed along the Lake Waikaremoana Great Walk, with four people on it. I wrote about this earlier and linked to much of the earlier coverage.

    The latest coverage has been driven by the sudden availability of a video of the accident. This could be compared with when it actually happened, which triggered a short flurry of attention after which it promptly vanished when easy sources of information dried up.

    The incident could easily have been extremely serious, and those involved were very lucky that it wasn’t. With the limited info available at first, potential significance for risks elsewhere, such as other back-country bridges, was high. The build date of the bridge, mid-1990s and roughly the same time as when DOC’s inconsistent building practices produced the Cave Creek Platform death trap, really should have triggered alarm bells of something worth active journalistic investigation. If those bells were ringing, they weren’t acted on.
    (more…)

  • Collapsing Bridges

    Today’s news about one of the two main support cables of the Hopuruahine Bridge (on a map) giving way, along the Lake Waikaremoana Great Walk (radio NZ, Stuff, NZ Herald) should be seen as very concerning. The consequence was that four tourists were dropped eight metres into two metres of water below. With a different set of circumstances (flooded river, shallower or no water, victims being incapacitated on the way down or otherwise unable to swim), the outcome could easily have been far more serious than four people plunging into a river and clambering out with their lives intact. Especially since the Cave Creek accident of 1995, which I wrote about in detail here, this is the type of incident which should never happen if a bridge has been engineered, built and inspected according to the standards by which DOC holds itself under New Zealand law, and yet it’s happened anyway.

    21003564696_5fb8955a21_n-4670279
    An asset number tag on the bridge over
    the Waingawa River in the Tararuas,
    outside Cow Creek Hut.
    (Not the bridge in question.)
    20843134439_b225ca8282_n-1595251

    Although the area is jointly managed by DOC and the Te Urewera Board, it’s likely DOC with its expertise and systems which continues to be most directly responsible for monitoring and maintenance of this bridge, as would have been the case until recently anyway. If you look closely at bridges, huts, signs, and nearly anything else significant and artificial that’s administered by DOC, you’ll find a tag with a number. Here’s a photographed example of the tag I passed on a bridge, just last Saturday.

    The number on the tag maps back to the Department of Conservation’s asset tracking system. The system is used to keep track of all of DOC’s structures. It assists with generation of inspection and maintenance programmes for qualified staff to check and verify that all of these structures are up-to-standard, and to record when this inspection and maintenance has been carried out.

    So far, media reports have stated that the bridge in question was most recently inspected in June, three months before this occurred. [Additional: Although Stuff and Radio NZ have both reported the most recent check as having been in June, Mike Slater of DOC stated in a Radio NZ Checkpoint interview that there was an Engineer inspection 18 months ago, a further inspection by a qualified DOC inspector 1 year ago, plus regular observations by DOC staff. The June claim in the Stuff article seems to originate from a statement by the Te Urewera Board which jointly manages the park, but it’s unclear what type of inspection that was.]

    It’s too early to say what the cause is for this to have happened, and whether we should be concerned about any other structures. DOC has already sent a senior engineer to the site to investigate more completely. Possibilities, I suppose, are (a) that an inspector made a mistake, (b) that whatever inspection plan which exists for the bridge was flawed for some reason, (c) that the design of the bridge was fundamentally flawed from the start, (d) that the bridge wasn’t built to its design, or (e) that some kind of vandalism or unforseen serious damage has occurred since the most recent inspection.
    (more…)

  • Recap on the recent Milford Track accident – DOC’s Review

    Kathryn Ryan interviewed Allan Munn this morning on Nine to Noon (Radio NZ National). Allan Munn is the Department of Conservation’s Southern Region Services Director. The interview regards changes being made following the death, in May 2014, of a person who was swept away from the Milford Track.

    This morning’s 20 minute interview can be listened to here. It’s also been reported on in The Press, and by Wilderness Magazine.

    The incident which sparked this review occurred when the group were on the Milford Track out of the main tourist season, after many of the standard “Great Walk” style facilities are removed. It’s not uncommon for people to visit outside the booking season, whether to avoid higher hut fees or after having been too late to book at an earlier time. It remains public land with open access, and can be relatively safe with good preparation and advice, and an ability to assess conditions. The group didn’t seem to have been be prepared for the reduced facilities, nor properly aware of it. This combined with other factors probably led to bad decisions and eventually resulted in the accident.

    I wrote down some of my own thoughts about this a few months ago.

    DOC has now completed an internal review. It’s decided that safety processes are fundamentally sound, but certain things could still be improved upon. During the interview Mr Munn noted that DOC had “a range of contacts with that party” prior to the event. The party members either didn’t hear the available advice, or chose to ignore it and take their chances. In the face of this, there’s probably little that could have reasonably and immediately been done in that specific case.

    More generally, though, DOC’s review has acknowledged that there are problems with getting key messages across to the masses in the face of modern forms of media, much of which is out of DOC’s control. It’s also noting higher numbers of visitors of limited skills and experience aiming to walk the Milford Track during the buffer zone between the end of the tourist season and when the most dangerous winter conditions set in.
    (more…)